Steven Soderbergh Tries to Keep ‘Contagion’ on Awards Radar

“Contagion” director Steven Soderbergh and several of his colleagues recently hosted a small soiree in Los Angeles to keep his pandemic drama in the loop for awards consideration. Actors Benicio del Toro and Dermot Mulroney, “Hunger Games” director Gary Ross and producer Jerry Weintraub were all on hand to gnaw on lamb chops and lemon meringues while talking up the movie.

Released by Warner Bros. in Sept, “Contagion” tracks the spread of an infectious disease as it expands around the globe and features a large cast that includes Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow and Kate Winslet.

Because the film doesn’t follow a traditional narrative and jumps between unrelated characters, screenwriter Scott Z. Burns says he treated the writing process like playing a game of Frogger. Mr. Burns — who wrote an essay about writing ‘Contagion’ for the WSJ in September — outlined the four main threads of the story after consulting with Soderbergh and interviewing infectious disease experts, then jumped from sub-plot to sub-plot as he wrote out the final script.

Production designer Howard Cummings says he also consulted with numerous experts when putting together the set for the biosafety lab used by Jennifer Ehle’s character in the film. He also brushed up on his knowledge of mass spectrometers, which he remembered from a college biology class, and strived to keep his sets as unfussy and realistic as possible.

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